07/15/2018

Kelly Rundle films in the barn at Zingerman's Cornman Farms in Dexter, Michigan with architect Charles Bultman and executive chef Kieron Hales talking in the background.

On Sunday, August 5th The Barn Raisers will screen at the Marengo Public Library, 235 E. Hilton Street, Marengo, Iowa at 1:00 p.m. The new documentary by Mid-America Emmy® nominated filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films has been a crowd-pleaser at numerous film festivals across the country. The filmmakers will take part in Q&A following the screening. The event is free to the public and seating is limited. The program is sponsored by the Friends of the Marengo Public Library Foundation.

“The Barn Raisers feels like a hymn to the solemn beauty and importance of these buildings,” wrote Entertainment Editor Jonathan Turner of the Dispatch-Argus.

Film critic Linda Cook, Quad City Times, gave The Barn Raisers four-out-of-four stars.

The Barn Raisers tells the story of barns in the Midwest by examining them through the lens of architecture. The film explores what building methods, barn styles, and materials tell us about the people who built them, the life they lived, and the role these “country cathedrals” played in the settling and building of the Nation. Barns were constructed by farmer-craftsmen, professional builders like Wisconsin round barn builder Alga Shivers who traveled from job to job, and even architects like Frank Lloyd Wright. The Barn Raisers paints a cinematic portrait of barns and builders, an important way of life that has been largely forgotten, and the film reminds us that these remnants from America’s rural past are still here to be interpreted and experienced.

“How could we create something from practically nothing with just a handful of tools and no drawings? The answer is in the barns,” said Rudy Christian, a traditional timber framer and barn preservationist from Burbank, Ohio.

Traditional timber framer Rudy Christian in The Barn Builders.

The Barn Raisers was an Official Selection at the Newport Beach Film Festival, the Beloit International Film Festival, the Interrobang Film Festival, the Royal Starr Film Festival, the Sunback Film Festival, and an award-winner at the Iowa Independent Film Festival and the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival.

The Barn Raisers was partially funded by grants from Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area, Wisconsin Humanities Council, Humanities Iowa, the Kansas Humanities Council, the Ohio Humanities Council, the Michigan Barn Preservation Network, the National Barn Alliance/Russ & LuAnn Mawby, the Moline Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Jackson County. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this documentary film and program do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations.

Tammy Rundle interviews Dennis Good at the Good Farm in Ogden, Iowa, home of World's Champion Belgian stallion Farceur.

The Rundles are the producers of twelve award-winning documentaries including the Lost Nation: The Ioway 1, 2 & 3 series, and the Emmy® nominated Country School: One Room - One Nation,River to River: Iowa’s Forgotten Highway 6, and Letters Home to Hero Street (co-produced with WQPT-PBS).